Facebook’s ‘humour’ defense is folly

Facebook thinks that discussing the rape of children is a joke.

The social network, whose stock has been in a death spiral since its initial public offering in May, decided that instead of shutting a discussion page dedicated to pedophilia it would instead force the administrators of that disgusting effort to amend the title to include the words “Controversial Humour” — with humor spelled the snooty British way.

I reported about this Facebook page yesterday.

It contains a picture of a little girl walking down an alleyway with a trenchcoat-clad man following in the distance. The title under the picture is, “Pedophiles are people too.”

Among the “humour” that Facebook seemed to find was one reader’s comment that “What’s better then f—king a 9 year old.” Another hilarity was apparently the comment “you know you skilled when you can fit 10 kids in 1 self storage box.”

Or this knee-slapper: “My other ride is a nine year old.”

I’m leaving grammatical errors and misspellings in these quotes so you can see that these people are not only sick but are also illiterate.

Facebook should be very concerned since it is already losing advertisers who think they aren’t getting their money’s worth despite its 955 million worldwide active users.

Crap like this isn’t going to help Facebook’s popularity with either those advertisers or the people these companies want to reach.

Here is part of Facebook’s comment to me about the “Pedophiles are people too” page: “Facebook is a service devoted to helping people share and making the world more open and connected. . . . In general, pages or groups devoted to jokes, even disgusting and distasteful ones, do not violate our policies.”

Facebook added this statement as “background.”

“The page in question does not violate our terms but the adminis[trator] of the page has changed the title to ‘controversial humour’ Pedophiles are people too, to help clarify the nature of the content.”

So, basically, here’s what probably happened: Facebook contacted the pedophile who put up this disgusting page and was told that it was all meant to be a joke. The company apparently bought that explanation despite the fact that the page’s weblink — pedo4u — is clearly an invitation to people who like to molest children.

Facebook users were clearly incensed yesterday at the company. Several told me that they called elected officials. Others contacted law enforcement.

One person’s comment on the page seemed to sum up most posters’ feelings: “this is not humor — this is sick.”

Since Facebook is so broad in its definition of humor, I asked the company to show me pages on its site that joked about the Holocaust, genocide, female rape and other controversial topics.

Guess what? The company’s spokesman didn’t get back to me.

What a joke he is.